Norma Velia Williamson - La Mirada

Every year for the past six years, the 2,300 students at La Mirada High School in Los Angeles County, Calif. celebrate an energy-themed National Environmental Education Week and Earth Day event. Science students display renewable energy and environmental projects while state agencies, including the California Coastal Commission. The school choir and jazz band perform and students play a variety of eco-themed games.

La Mirada Spanish teacher Norma Williamson coordinates the event. She is passionate about environmental education and uses it to help her students understand the environment through hands-on learning.

In her own classroom, Williamson addresses topics including habitat destruction in the Amazon rainforest. Because deforestation is an environmental concern in the Amazon, students see and touch plastic "wood" made from recycled milk jugs, which can be used as an alternative to lumber in construction. They bake cookies with solar ovens, which provide an alternative to using wood as cooking fuel. Students investigate the use of solar energy for powering electronics as a means of preventing the habitat destruction that results from the construction of hydropower plants.

Norma’s students translate articles from the Spanish youth eco-website www.somosamigosdelatierra.org and read and translate Spanish eco-literature. Williamson also uses Spanish-language pamphlets on conserving energy, which she obtains from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board.

Williamson shares the enthusiasm that she brings to her classroom with the whole school. She meets monthly with a team of other eco-teachers to share resources and ideas as well as collaborate on ways they can support school events and connect their content across their courses. She has been awarded numerous grants to support her efforts including a California Department of Education Green Academy grant. She has also received many teaching awards including the Green Leadership Teacher Award from Green Technology, a non-profit organization based in Pasadena.